Twitter suspends accounts in war against ‘tweetdecking’

Twitter has suspended a number of popular accounts as it looks to end the spammy practice of mass retweeting known as 'tweetdecking'.

Twitter has reportedly suspended a number of popular accounts in its continued fight against ‘tweetdecking’.

The practice is named after Tweetdeck, a Twitter-management tool that has provided a platform for some users to form invitation-only ‘decks’. These secret decks are used to spread the tweets of deck members and paying customers via retweets to ensure they become viral. They also steal the tweets of other users and pass them off as their own.

Customers, both individual users and brand accounts, pay deck owners to retweet one or more of their tweets a certain number of times across member accounts. Some decks give their customers temporary access to the deck in the form of an unofficial subscription.

Single retweets cost between $5-10, with subscriptions running into hundreds of dollars depending on the popularity of the deck.

According to BuzzFeed, Twitter has suspended a number of accounts that it clearly sees as most guilty, including @Dory, @GirlPosts, @SoDamnTrue, Girl Code/@reiatabie, Common White Girl/@commonwhitegiri, @teenagernotes, @finah, @holyfag and @memeprovider.

Some of the suspended accounts had millions of followers, an indication of just how successful tweetdecking has become.

Twitter hasn’t officially commented on the suspensions, but reports suggest the decision was taken after certain accounts were found to be in breach of Twitter’s spam policy. Under the policy, users are not permitted to “sell, purchase, or attempt to artificially inflate account interactions.”

According to Twitter’s rules, violating the spam policy is grounds for permanent suspension – as is creating a new account to evade a permanent suspension. It isn’t currently clear whether the affected accounts have been permanently suspended.

TweetDeck was launched in 2008, before being acquired by Twitter in 2011.